The Great American Road Trip
by delovlies
Summary: Jack wins the lottery and the gang embarks on a road trip to Santa Fe. What could possibly go wrong? Road Trip!AU. Co-written with shadeslayerprincess111
1. There is no we in road trips

**Me and my sister had an hour-long conversation about this, and it was too good not to write down and share. Much help from said sister, shadeslayerprincess111. (Also partially inspired by the toursies and from some tumblr hc's!)**

 **Please review!**

 **...**

Santa Fe.

It was perfect. What else would you do if you won the lottery?

Well, other people probably did lots of other stuff, but Jack was going on a road trip to Santa Fe. And he was taking Katherine. Maybe Crutchie too, since Jack would never leave him behind. Katherine wouldn't mind. What else would he do with 20,000 dollars?

Only it didn't turn out _quite_ as planned.

* * *

They only had the van. The stupid 12-passenger van with too many roll-down windows and a really weird shade for the interior, and no cup holders. Jack figured the three of them could always sleep in the back.

Well, five of them. Davey and Les were coming too. He couldn't very well just leave Davey behind, and since he was in charge of babysitting Les, the kid was coming too.

Jack didn't have another car, and besides, he kind of liked his van. Even if it didn't have cup holders. And gigantic vans were great for road trips.

They had maps, they had snacks, they had blankets and pillows and plenty of room, and they even had camping equipment. Spot Conlon wouldn't be in a 100 mile radius in about an hour. It was quiet. No one even complained when Jack made them meet up at 6 am to get an early start. Katherine called shotgun first, Crutchie got in the back to get more sleep.

Jack was just checking the tires one last time when they showed up.

"Hey, guys, he hasn't left yet!"

Jack whirled around just in time to see Race and Albert, the latter dropping an entire armful of stuff and plowing forward towards the passenger seat. "SHOTGUN!"

"Wh—"

"Jack, we're not late, are we?" a voice piped up at his side, and Jack suddenly realized that his road trip was dissolving before his eyes.

"Uhh, Romeo, what are you guys doing here?"

Albert had got to the passenger seat first by knocking Race over, and had yanked open the door only to find Katherine already in his claimed spot.

"Ya idiot, what do you think we're doing here?" Specs (he was here too?) joked, slapping Jack on the back. "We're going to California, right? Looks like you got plenty of room."

"California?" Jack squeaked out.

Specs nodded enthusiastically, Romeo grinning next to him.

"I've never been out of New York!" Elmer's voice materialized from behind him.

"Me neither!" Jojo said, joining the group by dragging over a very large suitcase.

"They're coming with us? Cool!" Les yelled from the van, and started towards the group, followed by Davey.

Jack turned back to the other boys, realizing that Henry, Buttons and Finch had come along to.

"You're coming with us?" Jack echoed, realizing that he had done nothing but repeat everything for the last five minutes.

"'Course we are, Jack! You won't have no fun unless we do!" Race said, putting his arm around Jack's shoulders. "Besides, I think your car's going to be a little empty unless you do."

Katherine had come over too. "I didn't know the boys were coming with us."

Jack shrugged, "I didn't either," he managed in a very small voice. He couldn't just tell them they couldn't come, and even if he could, Jack doubted that it would matter. It wasn't that he hadn't _wanted_ them to come; it was just that he'd ruled it out immediately based on the fact that he liked living and he was pretty sure that everyone else did too.

He looked at Katherine, she shrugged. He didn't know what a shrug meant. It was either "Jack get a backbone and say no" or "the more the merrier." Les was jumping up and down with excitement; Davey was getting lots of back-slapping in the form of greetings. Crutchie was still asleep. No help from any of them.

He'd wanted a nice, quiet trip. Besides, there wasn't enough room for all of them. The rest of the boys were looking up expectantly. Jack cleared his throat. "Sorry, fellas, but-"

Les gasped, "No, Jack, I want them to come!"

Race actually looked sad, Romeo and Buttons looked on the verge of tears, and Finch's shoulders were drooping.

How bad could it be? They were his friends. Jack didn't think he could tell them no.

"But there's more of us than there are seats," he finished.

Nine faces lit up. "Does that mean we can come?" Elmer asked.

"Yeah, what the heck. What's the worst that could happen?" The boys and Les broke out into cheering.

He dared a quick look at Katherine, she didn't look mad. He must've interpreted the shrug correctly.

Albert shoved Race aside again and made a dart for the van, screaming "Shotgun!"

"Hey, wait a minute, stop!" He grabbed the back of Albert's shirt, keeping him back. If he was getting nine new traveling companions, there had to be order.

"Aw, Jack," Albert started, but Jack shut him up.

"Ground rules. Number one, Katherine gets shotgun the whole time." Albert looked ready to protest, so Jack quickly continued, "Number two, no pushing each other or fighting or violence. Number three, seatbelts on. The whole time. And four, you guys gotta clean the car up at the end of the day. And five, windows stay rolled up unless I say so, and no screaming or distracting me. And no smoking." He directed the last one at Race. "Or I take the cigars."

He was immediately met with agreement "Sure, Jack, we can do that," and "You got it, Jackie."

They headed towards the van, all the boys hauling luggage. (Except Elmer, who didn't have anything with him?) Henry opened the door, started to claim the back row.

"Hey, Crutchie's here too! Hiya Crutch!"

Jack remembered Crutchie a second too late. He must've fallen asleep.

"What are you guys doing here? WHAT IS GOING ON?" his friend, now awake, yelled, and Jack could only shrug again.

"I thought it might be more fun to have the whole crew along. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Oh, hey, me an' Race can sit in the trunk, that'll solve the problem!" Albert yelled, a little too excited to be quiet.

" _The trunk_?" Katherine, Davey and Jack said in unison.

"Yeah, like where the luggage goes! Where'd you expect us to go, the roof? That's for the luggage!"

Before Jack could say anything, Specs threw him an armload of tie-down straps and bungee cords.

* * *

An hour later, with all of their luggage and the camping equipment—minus Jojo's very large suitcase that he insisted had to go in the trunk with Race and Albert—strapped to the roof and everyone buckled in, they were off.

There was a lot of initial hysterical screaming and yelling for about five minutes, someone was playing "Holiday Road" from tinny phone speakers and someone else was yelling the lyrics to "Here I Go Again," and Jack tried very hard not to regret his decision to let them come along.

But then everyone got surprisingly quiet. Jack had strategically place the quietest boys in the front row behind him and Katherine—Davey, Les, Crutchie. The rest of them were in the back two rows. He could hear Albert and Race laughing manically from the trunk, and was glad that he couldn't actually see what they were doing.

By the time they'd gotten out of Manhattan, it was actually sort of quiet. Jack sneaked a glance in the review mirror, most everyone was asleep. In the back row, Romeo had forgone the middle seat and was instead sprawled on top of Henry, Elmer and Jojo's laps.

"This might not actually be so bad," he said to Katherine. She had three different maps and an entire collection of pens and highlighters and was trying to give him directions. "They can act like relatively docile sometimes. And," he gestured to the open space between them on the bench seat. "If anyone misbehaves, they can sit in the time-out seat. That should keep them in line until they find out that we're actually going to Santa Fe and not California."

"We did talk about going to San Francisco. We could go to Santa Fe on the way there," she suggested.

"I guess we'd by two-thirds of the way there if we were in New Mexico." Jack thought about that. "The Great American Road Trip! From the Atlantic to the Pacific!"

He poked her. "Find me a route, Ace. If we're going to haul the whole gang across the county, we're going to do it right. California it is!"

Katherine threw one of her pens at him, giggling. "And turn the radio on," Jack continued. "Can't have no road trip without tunes."  
As it turned out, that was a mistake.

"Eye of the Tiger" was playing, and that woke everyone up because they had some unspoken rule that the song needed to be yelled along to. In the midst of the chaos, the sun came out and Jack practically resorted to sign language to get Katherine to get his sunglasses because talking and trying to be heard would be futile at this stage. He was pretty sure that someone was dancing in the back row, but it was kind of hard to tell because Race chose that moment to climb over the backrest from the trunk and sit on top of Henry in order to roll down the window. "SUN'S OUT, GUNS OUT!" he screamed, sticking his arm out of the window.

Jack's rules went out with it.

* * *

After Elmer asked, "What do you actually do on road trips" and Les had said, "Are we there yet?" three times, Jack decided it was time for a bathroom break. They'd been on the road for a few hours, and he pulled off at the next rest stop he saw.

The boys piled out of the car, Race and Albert vaulting over the top of the back row in order to get out. Buttons had been sleeping on the floor, and fell out when Finch opened the door. Jack got their attention before they scattered, "Ten minutes, tops. If you're not back, I leave without you."

Ten minutes later, he was the only one back at the van. He waited three minutes; there was no sign of any of them. Then Jack got worried, ran back inside only to find Buttons, Romeo and Davey each with about ten brochures from the display that had one for every tourist trap with a three-state radius. He found Albert, Henry, Jojo and Finch still in the bathroom, playing with the automatic sinks.

The rest of the crew was by the vending machines, watching Race violently trying to get his stuck soda out by attacking the soda machine. Jack interfered before the whole thing could tip over on top of them. He grabbed the back of Race's shirt and dragged him away.

Thirty minutes after they initially stopped, they were back on the road. They were now in New Jersey, and Jojo very helpfully pointed out a field of cows.

Katherine swiped the aux cord from Crutchie, and both of them and Les started singing Disney songs. Jack was also surprised that apparently he was the only one that didn't know all of the words to "A Dream is A Wish Your Heart Makes," after every other occupant of the van sang along to that one. Halfway through, he swore that he could hear what sounded like Spot Conlon singing, too. Jack shook his head. Maybe he was starting to crack.

Ten minutes after that, Specs yelled that he had to pee.

"We just stopped! Didn't you go then?" Jack yelled, ignoring Katherine's suggestion to silently count to ten before answering

"Well, I didn't have to go then!"

This time he did count to ten, took a deep breath, and managed to ground out, "I'll pull over in a minute and you can go in the woods."

"JACK, I CAN'T GO IN THE WOODS!"

Specs had to hold it.

* * *

Around noon, the boys started dropping hints that they were hungry. "Hey, guys, look! A Taco Bell!" Crutchie said, and the rest of them started out the window at the passing restaurant like it was the best thing they'd ever seen.

Also "Wow, I could really go for some food right now," from Albert, yelling to be heard from the back.

And, "Hey, look. Cows," from Jojo.

Jack took the next exit with a McDonald's. "Figure out what you want, guys, I'm going to hit the drive-thru and we're going to get back on the road."

"Awww, Jack, I don't want to go to McDonalds!" Finch said, pouting. "Can we at least go to Burger King? I got coupons."

"Finch, it's literally the same thing! I'm not going anywhere else," Jack said, using his best Mom voice.

As soon as a slowed down in front of the menu board, Specs bolted out of the car and made a beeline inside, presumably to the bathroom.

The rest of them started shouting out what they wanted. "Okay, one at a time!" Jack yelled, but that didn't work very well.

"Hey, Jack, can I get two number fives?" Race asked (he'd somehow managed to get out of the trunk).

"Oh, also get me some cookies," Romeo put in, even though he'd already had his turn. Les started to change his order, Davey shut him up.

"Supersize me!" Someone yelled from the back. It sounded weirdly like Spot Conlon. Jack shivered.

"You want two, Race?" he tried to clarify.

"Yeah, and Romeo wants his cookies. And Albert wants you to get him one of the breakfast thingies."

Specs jumped back in the van, holding a to-go bag. He then made Jack order him more fries since his immediately got stolen.

They ended up having to wait about twenty minutes for their food. And somehow, all of the boys from the backseat crowded into the front row. Romeo and Race ended up between him and Katherine, Romeo sitting on Race to lean over Jack to flirt with the cashier. Half the boys were basically out the windows, someone stole Spec's glasses. He could hear some muffled yelling, it sounded suspiciously like Henry screaming that he was drowning. Jack risked a glance behind him. They'd piled on top of each other in order to fit up front, and he _thought_ he could see Henry at the bottom. Specs had taken refuge in the middle row, muttering that he now hated everyone and was going to spend the rest of the trip watching vines.

Katherine sent them all back to their seats when the food arrived. As everyone was passing around the bags and getting their food, Romeo shrieked from the back, "Jack, you forgot my cookies!"

Jack hadn't even realized that you could order cookies at McDonald's. "We have to go back through and get them!"

Romeo was really convincing when he wanted to be (dang puppy eyes!) and since he looked ready to cry, Jack got back in the drive-thru line. Which, thanks to how long it had taken them to order, was about 10 cars deep. They'd all finished eating before they even got to the window, and Romeo scrambled up front and took them from the window before Jack could even take his hand off the steering wheel. Jack considered adding an "all sales final" policy to the rules.

Back on the road somewhere in Pennsylvania, Specs had traded seats with Crutchie and was now sequestered in between Davey and Les. Headphones on, he was glued to his pone, "Look at all dem chickens!" Les repeated it while Davey looked up from reading _War and Peace_ and glared at him.

Race broke the rules again within five minutes by attempting to illicitly smoke from the trunk. "I will turn this car around, Racetrack!" was Jack's response. However, his wrath got sidetracked when Elmer announced he had to pee, and everyone else agreed, and Jack had to pull over yet again.

While they were waiting for everyone else to get back, Katherine whispered to Jack that she'd taken all of Race's cigars, and giggling, they hid them under the driver's seat.

After ten minutes, Jack closed his eyes, crossed his fingers, and hoped he had everyone, and they got back on the road. Albert had gotten a hold of the aux cord, and was playing, "Never Gonna Give You Up," which, apparently, was hysterically funny.

"COWS!" Jojo screamed, overenthusiastically pointing out the window.

"Why you always lyyyyinnn'?" Specs said.

Jack's started phone started ringing, "Why is Crutchie calling me?"

Katherine yelled for everyone to be quiet, and turned it on speaker. "Hello?"

"HEY YOU GUYS LEFT ME AT THE REST STOP! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?"

Jack's headache suddenly increased exponentially. And it was only the first day.


	2. In which everything goes wrong

**Thanks** Teeloganroryflan **and** Ostrich on a Rampage **for highly-appreciated reviews, and also for all the follows/faves from last chapter!**

 **Also, advance apologies are necessary for only knowing vines from like 2015.**

…

Jack quickly learned that he hated backtracking. It took ten more minutes to find a place to turn around with his giant van, and by the time they got back to the rest stop, Crutchie had all but given up hope that they were coming back for him. "Dumb crip's just too damn slow," Jack mumbled under his breath as they pulled up in front of him. But once a shaken Crutchie was safely buckled in, Les whispered to Davey that it was time for a bathroom break again. Except Les wasn't very good at whispering, so everyone heard and Jack gave them another ten minutes.

"Okay, fellas," he said as everyone got back in their seats, "We're doing roll call. Yell your name if you're here."

That didn't work, since they all screamed back at once. Katherine took over for roll call after that.

"Hey, where's my cigars?" Race yelled from the back. Jack looked over at Katherine and grinned, and she punched his shoulder for being so obvious.

"I DO NOT HAVE YOUR CIGARS RACE," Albert was protesting, and then Jack heard some vaguely terrifying sounds of violence from the back. The boys in the back row were kneeling on the seats to look behind them, and were cheering on the fight. Jack also swore he could hear Spot Conlon screaming (he had a very distinctive scream), which convinced him even more that he wasn't going to last even the rest of Day 1.

Jojo stopped cheering on the fight long enough to point out some more cows.

Jack gripped the steering wheel, tried to focus on driving while Katherine tried to get them to put their seatbelts back on via yelling at Davey, who was still trying to read _War and Peace,_ and sighed loudly if anyone talked to him. Specs was still between him and Les, slouched over, oblivious to the fight in the back. "You're gonna learn today!" he said.

"Hey, wasn't there a rule about _not_ fighting or something?" Jack was pretty sure they were breaking all of his rules at once. When no one reacted, he made a mental note to stop at Wal-Mart and get a bullhorn or something.

It took ten more minutes to convince Race that Albert did not, in fact, have his cigars. Jack casually said he'd probably misplaced them. And then he was relegated to sitting in the time-out seat, between Jack and Katherine. That didn't last very long, because a nicotine-deprived Race was not a fun Race. Jack felt kind of bad about stealing the cigars, but Race _had_ broken one of the rules.

He tried to get Specs to go sit in the back with Albert so he could put Race in the row behind him, but Specs was too wrapped up in whatever vine he was watching to even hear Jack. He wasn't about to put Les back there, and Davey just sighed dramatically and turned the page of his book rather than answering.

So Race ended up back in the trunk with Albert, and apparently they forgave each other because within five minutes they were yelling One Direction, which caused the entire van (minus Specs and Davey) to join in. Jack hadn't realized that he wasn't the only one who pretty much knew all the words. Crutchie was giving an all-in diva performance, and so was Les, which scared Jack a little bit.

Everything was actually going somewhat well until Jack looked at his fuel gauge.

"OH CRAP, we're almost out of gas!" he yelled without thinking. That caused mass panic from the back. Everyone screamed, and started freaking out.

"We're going to die!" Elmer was yelling. Henry was hiding under the seat, as if that would help at all. Romeo scrambled up the front, hopped over the back of the front seat, and was currently clinging to Katherine in terror.

"We'll be stranded on the side of the road, and have to walk back to Manhattan," Finch said. Buttons was frantically trying to find all of his stuff, "just in case the car blows up…" Katherine was trying to find the next gas station on the map, Race was still singing while Albert was trying to figure out what was going on.

Davey was making a stoic effort not to stop reading, but that was getting progressively more difficult because Les had launched himself across Specs to get to Davey and was having a meltdown.

Everyone shut up when the emergency gas light came on, and the next twenty minutes were spent in dead silence (minus some muffled crying from an unknown source) as they coasted on fumes, looking for the next exit.

"Why does Pennsylvania have gas stations so far apart?" Crutchie whispered.

When they did finally make it to a somewhat sketchy gas station out in the middle of nowhere, the boys were so freaked out that they were now starving, and wiped out the snack selection inside.

Armed with a ridiculous amount of chips, candy and drinks, they piled back into the van. Race returned with five bags of Doritos, and apparently they had needed Jojo's ridiculously big suitcase, since he was wheeling it out. Crutchie had bought two gallons of chocolate milk and some cups, and they were passing cups around and saying, "Bottom's up!" Romeo came back with a pack of chocolate-chip cookies, and Jack wondered if he should be concerned that Romeo was apparently obsessed with them. Specs now had a bag of only-watermelon jolly ranchers, and yelled, "Watermel-oonne!" from time to time.

But then Davey lost his cool. "HEY, I'm trying to read here! CAN I GET SOME PEACE AND QUIET, PLEASE?" It went on for several minutes with some decidedly Les-inappropriate language, the rest of them just staring in shock.

Even after he finished ranting, it was a good ten seconds before anyone said anything. "Sure, Dave, you wanna sit in the trunk? You can't hear nothing back there," said Race, who had managed to find room in the last row of seats to sit.

Much scrambling and climbing ensued, since Jack wasn't stopping for seat changes. Race and Albert switched seats with Davey and Les (who refused to be parted from his brother since the gas incident). They'd also lugged the giant suitcase into the front row with them. Jack was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

"Why do you need that, Racer?"

Race fixed him with a glare, complete with some watery eyes. "I can't have my cigars, and now I can't have this?" If someone else had stolen the cigars, Jack wouldn't have felt bad, but he did, so he let it go.

Something landed on his shoulder a few minutes later. "What the heck!" Jack yelled, looking up at the ceiling, convinced it was a spider. There was a barrage of laughter from behind him, and then an errant pretzel slid from his shoulder to his lap.

"No putting snacks on the driver!" Jack said, making Katherine laugh.

Three m&ms and a dorito chip followed the pretzel before Katherine made him switch drivers with her. "You get cranky in the afternoons, Jack. Take a nap or something." She fixed Albert and Race with a glare.

Jack woke up an hour later to utter chaos and Katherine yelling, "I will turn this car around, boys, I will turn this car around!"

"Ace? Wha—" before he could finish, he realized he was completely covered in various snacks, courtesy of Race and Albert.

Jack drove after that.

* * *

He decided that the only place they would all agree to eat dinner was Golden Corral, so that's where they were going. Romeo, though, wanted to go back to McDonalds. He shut up when Jack told him that they probably had unlimited cookies at Golden Corral.

"I've never been to a buffet before," said Jojo, as they were walking in.

"I'm going to eat _everything!_ " Elmer said.

Jack smacked the back of his head, "No, you're not."

Specs still wasn't talking to anyone, but Jack had made him leave his phone in the car. Davey was sticking close to Jack and Katherine, since the rest of the boys were practically jumping up and down from excitement.

Within moments of arrival, the three of them had lost everyone else to the buffet. It took twenty minutes for everyone to show up at the group of tables pushed together.

Each boy had at least two plates, and not even of normal food. Or maybe it was, but they'd gotten so much stuff Jack couldn't tell what it was anymore. Only Crutchie had gone on the food adventure and come back with a halfway normal meal. He was currently staring with shock at the monstrosity that was Les's plate. Davey face-palmed and went back to reading. Katherine was giving him a look, but as usual, he couldn't interpret it.

"Hey, where's Romeo?" he asked, after doing a headcount. He'd left his food and his cookies, but he was nowhere to be seen. Finch shrugged.  
Buttons turned around. "Check the waitress stand. Last I saw him he was making a move."

Jack stood up to get a better view. "Oh, there he is…" he narrowed his eyes.

Was that…?

Jack sat back down, heart pounding. He nudged Katherine. "Tell me, am I loosing it or is that Spot Conlon over there with Romeo flirting with the waitresses?"

Race, sitting next to him, overheard. He stopped, fried chicken wing halfway to his mouth. He looked towards the waitress stand and dropped the wing. He looked weirdly uneasy. "Um, nope. Definitely not. Nope," he shook his head, forced a laugh, "you're just loosing it, Jackie. Hey, guys, Jack thinks he saw Spot Conlon."

"Whhaaatt, Jack, what would Spot be doing here?" Albert said, louder than usual. Jojo was looking nervously toward the waitress stand.

"You're crazy, Jack!" Crutchie protested.

"But what about—" Les said, before he was cut off by Finch.

"Hey, Les, have you checked out the ice cream machine yet? Let's go check it out," he grabbed Les by the arm and practically dragged him away.

Okay, weird.

"ICE CREAM?" Jojo shouted, dropping his corn-on-the-cob. He ran after Henry and Les, whooping.

Katherine shrugged. "I don't see anyone who looks like him, and Romeo's coming back."

He could tell she was starting to get annoyed by the boys, so he put his arm around her. "Sorry, Ace, I'm just tired, I guess. Thanks for not calling me crazy."

"PDA!" Race screamed, pointing. "Not in front of the kids!"

Katherine gave him _the look._ Race sat back down and guiltily picked up his wings. Jack reminded himself to kill Race later.

Several trips to the buffet and ice cream machine later, plus two spilled drinks and a pummeling when Elmer put salt in Spec's soda, Jack herded them back into the van. They'd left a giant tip for the waitress because she was pretty, and because their table looked like a war zone.

He apprehended Race before he could sneak off to buy some replacement cigars. It took three trips back inside to get everyone from either the bathroom or the dessert table. By that time, Jack was starting to lose his patience. He locked the doors. "Listen up everybody. We're trying to make it to Kentucky tonight, and then we'll stop. A couple more hours. Keep it together, don't break any more rules."

"And put on your seatbelts!" Katherine added.

They were back in their regular seats, by now it was too dark for Davey to read. Crutchie, now back in the front, was playing his "road trip playlist" which turned into all of the boys yelling along to whatever song he was playing. Except Race, who was still freaking out because he had by now realized that he hadn't just misplaced his cigars. Jack was tempted to throw one of Race's cigars (still safely under his seat) back there at him, since he was yelling his head off about how unjust it was to take his stuff, and blaming them all.

Specs, too, was yelling, since apparently he'd used all of his phone data up watching vines. That was also everyone else's fault.

Then, Jojo and Elmer somehow ended up having a tickle fight, which led to the entire back two rows trying to tickle one another. It quickly stemmed forward, leaving Davey to fend off the hoards with his hardback novel and Crutchie less-successfully trying to do the same with his crutch.

Jack was afraid to look back there because of the sheer amount of screaming they were doing.

Twenty minutes after they left the restaurant, Romeo climbed over the back of the front seat in between Jack and Katherine.

"CAN'T GET ME UP HERE, LOOSERS!" he yelled into the chaotic back, having successfully escaped the threat of being tickled.

Jack let him stay so long as he promised to be quiet, and tried not to think about how many rules had just been broken, or that they were still 200 miles outside of Kentucky.

It was war back there, and Jack still had to drive. He gripped the steering wheel, focused, and went into battle mode.

Katherine nudged him to get his attention after a while. She gestured to the back, and Jack realized that the car was quiet again. He risked a glance in the back. Crutchie and Les were asleep, both of them leaning on Davey, who had found a penlight and was still reading. Race was sleeping on the floor next to the door. The boys in the back two rows, with Albert in Romeo's vacated spot, were asleep practically on top of one another. But it was kind of hard to tell, since they were underneath blankets and various sweatshirts, with random arms and legs poking out every which way. It looked severely uncomfortable, but they were all sound asleep.

Romeo had fallen asleep with his head on Katherine's shoulder. Jack looked at her and they both smiled. Sure, the boys had gone insane the entire day, but it wasn't so bad now.

And he did have to admit they were making at least more interesting. Once again, he found himself thinking that this might not be so bad.

He was wrong.


End file.
